Alexandre Dumas Books

Alexandre Dumas n'a pas ecrit le livre" the son of porthos" mais PAUL MAHALIN(ecrivan français) Ce livre est une suite du livre"Viconte de Bragelone" de Dumas et le livre raconte la vie du fils de porthos et de Aramis(le dernier mousquetaire vivant) Pour les lecteurs qui ont aimé le viconte de bragelone je doit conseiller le livre

The only reason this novel had Dumas as its author was because it was signed so. Nowadays, very little (if any) evidence suggests that he was actually the author. At any rate this novel, which deals with a dumb but honest and strong hero while portraying Aramis (who was obviously the only one of the musketeers alive at the time) as the Evil Personified, is among the worst novels I have ever read untill the end.

Alexandre Dumas n'a pas ecrit le livre" the son of porthos" mais PAUL MAHALIN(ecrivan français) Ce livre est une suite du livre"Viconte de Bragelone" de Dumas et le livre raconte la vie du fils de porthos et de Aramis(le dernier mousquetaire vivant) Pour les lecteurs qui ont aimé le viconte de bragelone je doit conseiller le livre

a fascinating but abridged version of the incredibly rare dictionary of cuisine. worth the price, but lacking in some very important historical data.

The Chevalier D'Harmental, also known as "The Conspirators", maintains a clear feeling of being a work of discovery. It seems that Dumas conceived ideas in the course of this work that would be further developed and polished up for the classic romances that he would write in subsequent years. The elements of conspiracy and love struggle awkwardly for prominence throughout this novel. The budding romance is a sweet story of D'Harmental's bumbling pursuit of the lovely Bathilde. The conspiracy is another story that should not be spoiled here. I would recommend this book to anyone who is already a Dumas fan. Otherwise, you might walk away with a bad impression of one of the greatest writers of all time.

Apparently Porthos had a bastard. This son is the hero of the piece. Not really a shock, eh?

Bizarrely, it is Aramis that is the antagonist. The rest of the boys are dead and buried, and Aramis is now a scheming spider with designs for the girl that the Son of Porthos has a thing for.

This is really pretty ordinary. Along the lines of 'what were you thinking'?

This book is so badly proofread and edited that it's a chore to get through it. There are an average of 3 typos per page, not to mention incorrect word substitutions, improper italicization (almost every instance of the words "by" and "my" is italicized), and downright bad translation. The worst crime is that the "editor" chose to peremptorily truncate the novel on the basis that the last chapters aren't good enough to bother to print. Dumas' French Revolution novels are important works of historical fiction and this edition of Joseph Balsamo is an insult to both the author and the reader. I'm disappointed in Amazon for doing business with such a disreputable publisher.

Joseph Balsamo begins with a meeting in the dead of night high in the mountains as a group of robed and hooded freemasons from around the world meet to plot the fall of the French Monarchy (it's actually more complicated than that, but I'm not going to try to put it into words). The leader of this group, Joseph Balsamo, then takes shelter in a storm at the impoverished household of the Baron de Taverney and his daughter Andrée and things then become very mysterious indeed. How is it the younger Balsamo can recall incidents from Taverney's younger days as if he had been there himself? What mysterious hold does Balsamo have over the beauteous Andrée that he can command her actions with a wave of his hand? How is it that when the party of Marie Antoinette stops at Taverney Balsamo provides a sumptuous repast replete with gold plate out of thin air?

After this, the story switches to Paris and Versailles with the intrigues and shenanigans of Louis XV's mistress Madame DuBarry as she connives to have an elderly Baroness agree to present her at court, Balsamo's wife begging sanctuary at a nunnery (very creepy), the wedding procession of Marie Antoinette, Balsamo's mentor's efforts to find the secret to eternal life (the final ingredient needed being the most costly of all) and ending in one heck of a cliff hanger as a fireworks display goes awry and puts Andrée in harm's way with only one person to save her.

Suffice it to say that Dumas' tale of the lives and loves of the Court of Louis XV and the growing tension amongst the lower classes of Paris and beyond was quite entertaining, especially with the mysterious appearances and disappearances of Balsamo in and out of the story. I also very much enjoyed the way Dumas used the character of Gilbert and his rationales about his lack of bread and the methods he would use to obtain the bread an excellent way to support the early beginnings of socialism and resentment against the monarchy. Be advised, you won't find the swashbuckling page turning excitement of the Musketeer series. This is the first of a five volume series and Dumas is setting up much of the background for the later books in this one, so some readers might find this slow paced at times and I only recommend this for Dumas fans (I'm one) or for those looking for well written fictional tales of the times leading up to the French Revolution. Next book in the series, Memoirs of a Physician.

Note, I see some other reviewers complaining about a poorly published edition of this book. I obtained a nice aging copy from the library and was quite satisfied with that, and my review is for that book and not the Boomer Publishing edition.

in fifty years of reading books in several languages, i have never seen a book so poorly prepared. there is not a single page without a typo, misspelling, wrong font, bad punctuation... some pages have as many as ten mistakes. clearly no one at the publisher read the book. apparently no one really cared. it's absolutely awful. don't buy this edition.

My one-star review here has nothing to do with Dumas' novel, but a very poor publishing job by 'Boomer Books'. It seems to average about a typo or two per page. At times these typos actually confuse the reading, since they are not only misspellings, but also whole words will be replaced with entirely different words. I can take a typo here and there, but in this book it is so common that it begins to affect the enjoyability of reading it.

I will say that the book itself is great and I highly recommend it. I have not seen any other versions of this book, but if you can find one published by other than 'Boomer Books', it would be much better. There is no introduction or translation notes or anything like that. Its very obvious that Boomer put no efforts or care into this.

This is a must for Dumas fans. Joseph Balsamo is the first book in a series that capture the history of the French revolution in a novel that is truly of epic proportins.
Love, war, fantasy and politics are delicately woven into the fabric of the story. Highly recommended.

I picked up this book on the assumption that it was written by one of my favorite authors: Alexandre Dumas, the author of the Three Musketeers, Count of Monte Cristo, etc. My copy of this book even lists these books as "other books" by the author. Well, I started reading it, and it was terribly boring and not similar at all to other Dumas books I had read. I found myself profoundly disappointed that Dumas would release a book of such poor quality. I was so displeased with it that I didn't even finish the book. It is nothing more than a normal "romance" novel, which has been deemed a classic simply because it is old.

I then turned to Dumas' The Vicomte de Bragelonne, and lo and behold, it mentions in the introduction that Alexandre Dumas had a son who was also named Alexandre Dumas, who wrote Camille. I'm sorry to say that the son does not even come close to living up to the literary ability of the father, and is in fact a quite poor author. Don't be fooled by the name of Alexandre Dumas on this book: it is far worse than any of the hundreds of novels the real Dumas wrote.

Overall grade: F

Classics are my favorite books. Their wordy, sometimes roundabout, but nevertheless substance-filled sentences make for satisfying, but not necessarily quick reading. This book, however, was as close to a "quick read" as any classic I have ever read. But the story could have been told in an even shorter novel. The narrator recounted his love again and again and made several actions numerous times. The novel felt empty and impersonal, the actions of the main characters and the "love" they felt for each other, based on superficial whims. If written in modern-day prose, this novel would not have been nearly as notable. Nevertheless, because I have a soft spot for classic literature, I enjoyed this book.

Camille is that rarest of all literary creations: a readable, enjoyable classic. This novel tells a good story about the sometimes tragic and scandalous and sometimes joyous life and fortunes of one Marguerite Gautier, a Parisian courtesan, and her lover Armand. The pace in this book doesn't drag, isn't too long, and rises well to the exact conclusion a reader anticipates. This is a frank, even sexually bold sort of novel for its period, and demonstrates again that the nineteenth-century French were willing to delve into subject areas their English counterparts were not. The avenues the romantic entanglements in Camille take combine with other elements to give this tale a more modern feel than most novels of two centuries ago. It's not great literature (in fact it's barely above a well-written romance novel) but it's definitely not bad reading material, either. Three and a half stars is what I'd plant on this work.

I have an account at simplyaudiobooks.com, and I had this title in my queue when I read the above reviews here. It concerned me as I want the real unabridged version of this story. I contacted SimplyAudiobooks and they assured me it was the unabridged version. So I then contacted Blackstone Audio and asked them about ISBN#(0786193034) and they confirmed it IS unabridged weighing in at 49 hours it must be. So there you go, your experience may be different...

i had a similar experience as previously indicated. in fact i ordered both the unabridged and abridged versions of this product and received the exact same product (despite the fact that the allegedly unabridged version was 2X the cost.) if you'll notice, the picture are confusing and therefore you don't know what you will be receiving. now i am looking elsewhere for an unabridged version as the information on amazon is inconclusive and ultimately unhelpful.

Although billed by Amazon as unabridged, this is a butchering of the story that would make Dumas roll in his grave. The back of the box says "abridged," yet somehow the store insists it is unabridged, simply because it is longer than other audio additions. Make no mistake, many rich and wonderful (not to mention important) are left off with no attempt to apologize, repent, or make amends. A proper COUNT audio book should be in the neighborhood of 30 CDs...this one is only 14, although this information is concealed in the product description. The picture shown is not accurate. BEWARE!

I think that Count is a really good book. I was hesitant to read it, at first, but once I got started, I couldn't stop. The action, once it gets started, is amazing. There's never a dull moment. Alexandre Dumas has created a wonderful picture of life in 18th century France.

I purchased the Scholastic version of the book so I could finish reading the novel (I had it on my PDA and lost my PDA). After finishing reading the Scholastic printing of the book, I found the book seemed to leave many unanswered questions, so I thought I would re-read it. It was then that I discovered that the scholastic publication is missing some of the chapters (though the included chapters are sequentially numbered). In fact, a person reading the Scholastic printing would never understand the most important act which caused Edmond Dantes so much grief, as that most important chapter, "the Conspiracy" is one of the omitted chapters. Thus, this printing is, in my humble opinion, worthless.
The book, as a whole, is great, and I recommend the book (in its complete form) to anyone.

I also purchased this because the description clearly states "unabridged". I just picked it up to listen to it, and was so upset to read across the back of the case "abidged". Am returning it, because I've read the unabridged version of the book, and we've discussed it in our ladies bookclub, and half of the readers didn't know half of the story, because they had mistakenly gotten the abridged version!

We thought we were purchasing the unabridged edition. We did not see any mention that it was not what we thought. Then, when we received it, it turned out to be an abridged edition, which was disappointing. Other than that, it was fine.

This is just about the kindle edition, not the 3 musketeers, which I love.

This edition was really really inexpensive, which is very nice.

Be aware that there is no active table of contents which makes it really hard to move around in this huge book (6 books).

Otherwise, no problem.